The memoir “Playing God” by James Craig is probably one of my favorite memoirs of The Love Issue. This memoir was such humorous piece that had me a little freaked out in the beginning, and then going “Ohhhhh” in the end. Craig creates an ominous mood at the start of his piece, and begins to increase our curiosity as we are introduced to the situation. Sentences such as “no matter whom I choose, one will die,” or “I stare at them, examining each, deciding who deserves to die. They stare back at me, afraid, like deer in headlights,” made me intrigued into who Craig wanted to kill and why.  In the end, I shared a laugh with my peers as we were revealed that Craig was only trying to decide which lobster to choose for his dinner.
A few reasons why I loved this memoir was because of the descriptions. Craig described the “victims,” or lobsters, as humans, making it more mysterious as to why one of the three needed to die. No reader would have guessed that Craig was actually talking about lobsters with the similes and comparisons Craig made in his piece; in fact, it wasn’t until the very last paragraph until we were informed that the piece was about lobsters! Craig quotes, “What that lobster saw was not a hungry teenager. That lobster saw a god.” I personally thought this was a great way to finish the piece, and end it all together; overall, I enjoyed Craig’s writing very much, and hope to see more of his again on Teen Ink.